Author: Slabtown Tours

Slabtown Fun Fact #27: Where is Fordham Heights?

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Drawing of Fordham Heights. Text "Is situated at the head of Lovejoy and Northrup streets. We have a few very choice building sites in this addition from $2500 to $3500 per lot, including all improvements."

fordham_heightsAnswer: “Fordham Heights is situated at the head of Lovejoy and Northrup streets”

Having successfully reintegrated the name “Nob Hill” into the urban fabric in the 1970s, a decade ago Mike Ryerson recruited his friends to bring the “Slabtown” name back to the working-class section of NW 23rd.

Resurrecting historic place names takes time and sometimes becomes confusing. For example, the “Alphabet District” is larger than the Alphabet National Register Historic District, but despite the subtle difference, they suffice as wayfinding devices. Perhaps historic place names only matter when word-searching text from the distant past to delve into the community’s neighborhood history.

But the heritage of a place can be rooted in disused names. The old names convey and embody heritage, but if they have fallen out of use they can lack a tangible connection. Historic names are like dates—often tedious and requiring rote memorization. Once we lose the oral use of a place name it can be lost to collective memory. With the advent of the car it seems to me that many mini-neighborhoods have morphed into larger tracts of land/geography and melded into one larger place name.

We at Slabtown Tours work with the Dan Volkmer Team, Northwest Children’s Theater, and the Northwest Neighborhood Cultural Center to produce an annual home tour on Father’s Day. The tour runs from 11am to 4pm on Sunday, June 19, 2016.

The theme of this year’s event is The Fifth Annual Walking Tour: Historic Homes of Old Nob Hill. The homes are clustered near the top of Lovejoy. (The all-volunteer team was not comfortable with any of the titles I had brainstormed, either because of a double-entendre or because the names had fallen out of use. The struggle to “brand” an event was exacerbated by a desire to retain historic integrity yet define a sense of place that the visitor could identify. Since no one recalls Fordham Heights or Goldsmith Hill those were unusable.)

Here are some forgotten Northwest Portland place names:
Atkinson’s Addition: Upshur, between 25th & 26th.

Blythswood: On Thurman & Aspen, the northwest part of Willamette Heights.

Fordham Heights: The south side of Cornell, northwest of the top of Marshall.

Goldsmith Hill: The top of Lovejoy, Marshall, and Northrup Streets

Murhard Tract: North side Thurman, west side 21st.

Nob Hill Terrace: Top of Lovejoy.

Wilson’s Addition: North side of Thurman at 23rd.

Whitechapel District: 14 blocks, bounded by SW Pine, Second, NW Flanders and Fourth

Fun Fact #26 The seedlings of Portland’s Heritage Monkey Puzzle Trees citywide can trace their origins to what Slabtown Event?

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Fun Fact #26 The seedlings of Portland’s Heritage Monkey Puzzle Trees citywide can trace their origins to what Slabtown Event?

Context Monkey Puzzle Tree:

Tour Guide Dr. Tanya March pointing to the Monkey Tree at Kennedy School
(Photo Credit Jen Dawkins March 2016)

Monkey Puzzle trees look like a Dr. Seuss illustration of a tree come to life.  In 1993 there were at least 150 trees of this variety in Portland—at least a third of those had “roots” in Slabtown.  The Monkey Tree (Araucaria araucana) is native to Chile, and like our historic homes its numbers are dwindling.  The males have oblong cones and the females have round cones—all of our city’s heritage trees of this type are male.  In their native Chilean mountain habitat they can reach a height of 100 feet and can live for 2,000 years.

Chile’s national tree, which dates back to the dinosaur era, is listed as ‘endangered’ on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Global Red List of Conifers.  In their native habitats these trees have suffered from climate change and massive fires in 2001–02 and 2014 have reduced their numbers by 50%.  There are a number of active online groups mapping the locations of the trees in our city and a Facebook Group “Monkey Puzzle Trees of PDX“.

Question: 

The seedlings of Portland’s Heritage Monkey Puzzle Trees citywide can trace their origins to what Slabtown Event?

Answer:

The 1905 Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, where seedlings were given away by a representative from Chile and planted by their recipients citywide.  Three Monkey Puzzle Trees from the Fair are protected heritage trees standing at 419 NE Hazelfern, 415 NE Laurelhurst, and 446 NE Fargo.  Link to map of these trees in Oregon created by Carol Studenman:

 

(The two best 1905 examples of Monkey Puzzle Trees are in Laurelhurst.)

Fun Facts are produced monthly by Tanya Lyn March PhD owner of Slabtown Tours to join our mailing list simply e-mail: [email protected].

Fun Fact #25 What was once in the vacant storefront on the southwest corner of NW 23rd and Northrup?

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Fun Fact #25 What was once in the vacant storefront on the southwest corner of NW 23rd and Northrup?
This site is soon to be developed 4 years after I wrote the original Fun Fact. (Google Earth Image)

In this age of rapid development (3-14-16), tour-goers and locals alike are puzzled that this corner storefront—on arguably the hottest tourist drag in Portland—stands neglected.  Why has this building in the heart of a high-rent commercial corridor remained vacant for nearly 25 years?  According an article by Peter Korn in a November 2007 Portland Tribune, the owners are a family operation that is only willing to lease to proprietors who have cash up front to do all the improvement and upkeep.  Nine years later the site still languishes.

Quality Pie 1940 Care of Mike Ryerson

Quality Pie once occupied the entire frontage.  Known as “The QP” by regulars, this 1950s-style diner was 23rd Avenue’s late-night hot spot.  Quality Pie was the quintessential place to people-watch, where New Wave/Punks would come after Satyricon shows to eat day-old pies, seated next to Portland’s finest who were filling up on coffee.

The corner storefront of the building at NW 23rd and Northrup has stood unoccupied since Quality Pie shut its doors in 1992.  Fans of lost Portland’s eccentric nightlife have created a Facebook group with 298 members (https://www.facebook.com/groups/59025722653/).  QP was where people came together from every walk of life in Portland.

Quality Pie not only was a beloved “coffee spot”, it also baked pies which it delivered to commercial operations citywide.  Paul Baker scanned some wonderful pictures family album pictures from the ’50s and ’60s which include shots of his aunt Hilda Langston, a tall brunette.  These images are amazing documents that are akin to Mr. Rogers Neighborhood’s segments on production assembly lines.  Interior images such as these rarely surface and these early color images give us a window into the creation of the pies.

Historic Curiosity Fun Fact #24 Baby raised by a local store?

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Postcard image of a baby bursting out of an image of Downtown Portland Meier and Frank Store text: Nadine Inez-The Meier and Frank employees' foster baby now weighs 9lbs. 14oz.-a gain of 7lbs. 14 oz.-since birth---she is grateful to the employees for all their love, good wishes and kindness.

Where are they now?

Nadine Inez and her twin were abandoned at the downtown Meier & Frank Store (601 SW 5th Ave.) during the Great Depression.  This image of Nadine Inez is from a postcard owned by Webfooter Stephen Kenney; he has asked Norm Gholston and Tanya March to share this image broadly in hopes that we can find Nadine Inez and interview her.  This postcard is from 1932, it is our understanding that the staff at Meier & Frank raised at least one of the the foundlings in the store for two years prior to the child’s adoption.
 As we learn more the team will post leads and artifacts on this post.
2-4-16
I believe they named the twins EMMIE and EFFIE….Gerry

2-4-16
A jpeg from a scrapbook arrived in our e-mail.  Looks like we are getting closer.

Fun Fact #23 Headaches of Overcrowding

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Headaches of Overcrowding

From Chapter Six Figure 5 Guilds Lake Courts by Dr. March Tom Robinson picture

(With COVID-10 my PPS children are missing overcrowding)

During WWII (1942-1945) the population of Oregon increased by 194,000 people.  Housing shortages were mitigated by the rapid construction of public housing units.  This had a rippling impact on school enrollment, which felt like a tsunami for families with children enrolled in public grade schools.

The Slabtown community witnessed the nearly instantaneous arrival of 10,000 people in a single development—the Guild’s Lake Courts wartime housing project, built predominantly on the landfill areas of Guild’s and Kittredge Lakes (now the NW Industrial Area) and on scattered plots in the Conway/XP Logistics region of Slabtown.  Chapman, the local grade school, was soon bursting at the seams.

Guilds Lake School Principle Posey
(Courtesy Guilds Lake History Project)

The new residents in Slabtown had come for defense work in steel companies and shipyards.  The mass influx of the children of this new work force caught the school district off guard.  There were an estimated 2,000 grade school-age children in the Guild’s Lake development in 1944.  St. Patrick’s School, serving Catholic families, had an enrollment of 400.  The other K-8 children of these war workers were assigned to Chapman Grade School, 1445 NW 26th Avenue.  The capacity of this 1920s school building was 750 students.  In 1941 there were 465 students enrolled; in 1942, 570 students.  In November 1943 enrollment reached 1,600 students.  Crowding would have been worse had over 100 children of Black families (who elected to keep their children out of school because of transportation and segregation concerns) also attempted to enroll.  The district classified over 300 students in the Gona section of Guild’s Lake Courts as truants (high school was not required and was not part of any of these truancy figures).  Linnton School was not a part of PPS District One in the 1940s but it absorbed students as well.

Guild’s Lake Students in Cooking Class at Chapman
(Courtesy Guild’s Lake Courts History Project)

The school district’s “double shifting” plan had tenured students receiving instruction from 8 AM to 12:45 PM and the children of the new arrivals segregated into the 1 PM until 5 PM shift, but even this strategy was ineffective.  Chapman’s principal, Charles A. Fowler, was turning students away and had as many as 47 students crowded into a single classroom under the guidance of a single teacher—a situation which he described to Richard Nokes of The Oregonian in November 1943 as “not so hot, educationally speaking.”  Both the “regulars” and the “swamp kids”—the Guilds Lake children—were suffering from the overcrowding.  Long-time members of the Chapman community advocated for constructing a new facility to relive crowding in the classrooms.

Eventually, Guild’s Lake School, built to educate 1,200 students, opened in the fall of 1944.  Seventh and eighth grade students attending Guild’s Lake School from 1944 to 1950 would go to Chapman Grade School once or twice a week for mechanical shop and cooking class.  I focused on this issue of crowding because Chapman is experiencing overcrowding again.  1940s was a wartime crisis, during the baby boom Chapman enrollment swelled and “temporary” portables were built to increase classroom capacity.  Tragic that this school was demolished.

Update January 29, 2016:

I have received a few calls about this article.  Many callers had questions about what happened to the school once the public housing was closed.  Some individuals wanted more history on the school.

A number of years ago I volunteered on a team to create curriculum for the PPS 9th Grade Transitional Academy.  That included an autobiographical account of life at Guild’s Lake by Chuck Charnquist who attended Chapman and Guild’s Lake School.  Link to Mr. Charnquist’s Narrative.  There is also the sample of primary source documents used by the instructors PPS must have created this link in-house, the point was to engage at risk students with history and their communities.

Additionally, PPS District I, used the structure as a wear house after the school according to a December 6, 1956 p 17 article about a robbery at the “warehouse” at 4275 NW Yeon in the Oregonian.  The site itself was up for sale in 1968 (The Oregon Journal October 15, 1968 p 6 sec C col. 4).  In 1973 the site was redeveloped as Freightline headquarters complex.  There is history of the school being considered for use by the police academy in City Archives and Records Center scrapbooks.  The Fall 1951 Guilds Lake School paper is the last issue in my collection of material gathers for the Guild’s Lake History Project the website for that project includes a chapter about Community Services Institution.

Fun Fact #22: Why are there so many horse rings in our neighborhoods?

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Fun Fact #22: Why are there so many horse rings in our neighborhoods?

Why are there so many horse rings in our neighborhoods?

Image of Slabwood Co. courtesy Norman Gholston.

 

Since the 1970s horse rings in Portland must be returned/replace post curb construction and repair. Starting in 2005, The Horse Project has encouraged participants of all ages to attach toy horses to the rings.  The effort’s first horse was installed in the Pearl by Scott Wayne and the installations of plastic horses has expanded organically across our city. We applaud their decade long effort to engage citizens and tourists via toys to our City’s rich history. 


For a decade now The Portland Horse Project has connected the history of horse transportation by attaching plastic horses to existing horse rings.  This art activity engages children and adults with very tangible remnants of our city’s equine past.  The horses left on the rings add a bit of whimsy to our city street.  This guerrilla art effort, started in 2005 by Scott Wayne, links us to our past.  

As a child I thought that all the horse rings in the curbs were for the personal use of the property owners.  If all owners today had cars, why not personal horses?, followed my logic.  In fact all the rings were not for personal horses they were for delivery drivers to tie up their horses when bringing owners slab wood, blocks of ice, moving furniture, etc. 


In January 15, 1907 the Oregonian ran the story “Fuel Dealers are Unable to Supply Their Customers” this was attributed by the East Side Slab Wood Company pointing not to a supply shortage but to a shortage of horses: “Our only trouble is to find teams for delivery.”  East Side Slab Wood Company switched from hauling with horses to “auto trucks” in 1920 and sold off its 16 wagons in the classifieds.  Other companies including the Portland Slabwood Company, Crystal Ice and Storage Company, Holman Transfer Company, and Multnomah Fuel Company were facing more stringent City rules governing their stables which propelled them to mechanization of their hauling systems.  Garbage wagons appear to have been single operator ventures when the garbage wagons were not city owned and operated.  As these various haulers of goods converted to new delivery systems the horse rings slipped into disuse for decades.    

It would be interesting to learn when the city switched to garbage trucks and when did household stop burning most of their trash in their yards.  Perhaps the subject of a future Fun Fact…

Fun Fact #21: What Historic NW House used pieces of the Marabba West in its last 1970s Restoration? For that matter what was the Marabba West…

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Fun Fact #21: What Historic NW House used pieces of the Marabba West in its last 1970s Restoration? For that matter what was the Marabba West…

Fun Fact #21: What Historic NW House used pieces of the Marabba West in its last 1970s Restoration? For that matter what was the Marabba West…

1895 Image of Nathan Loeb House from NR 1978 File.

Answer: It was the Nathan Loeb House (726 NW 22) built in 1893.  Rudolph Becker was never able to live in this house he had built.  The panic of 1893 was the worst economic depression the America had ever seen.  Becker was lucky to find an occupant who could take over the house.  Loeb ended up raising eight children in the home.  The panic was in part caused by overbuilding—once the banks failed, newly constructed houses were left vacant across the United States.  Empty Victorian houses became a part of ghost stories.  This house in featured in our Nob Hill-Alphabet District Tour.

 

Interior of Nathan Loeb House, 1895 from NR 1978 NominationNathan Loeb had eight children. He was born in Germany in 1828. He took up residence in Portland in 1857; his brothers opened a general merchandising business at the southwest corner of First and Stark Streets.
Faux Brick & my favorite window in Portland

It is hard to imagine today the desire to clad this home in faux brick asphalt siding. These two 1895 Kaufman images of the Loeb house above are from the Nathan Loeb House National Register Nomination prepared in the late 1970s.  The early picture was a significant resource for the restoration efforts.  “Using the Kaufman photos, Jerry Bosco and Ben Milligan of Westblock Glass[,] duplicated the original stained-glass designs and re-installed them.”   The Neighbor p 10, 11/1978, by Deirdre Stone.

My favorite window  as it looks today.
One Apartment Building so many names…

The Marabba West has an amazing history.The residential hotel building was first opened under the name “The Hill”later the Hobart-Curtis…   When the Sister’s of Mercy took over the building they renamed the building Jeanne d’Arc Young Women’s Hall the apartment building offered shelter to single women employed in department stores and as secretaries.  The “residential hotel” was a women’s only apartment building managed by nuns who looked after their reputation and provided community activities.  The Sister’s of Mercy held services in the Jeanne d’Arc chapel.  The rooms were furnished and provided reasonable rents for “business girls and lady tourists, permanent or transient.  Special features within the limitation of the minimum wage earner” (The Oregonian, November 23, 1919 p 43)

1215 SW 14th Jeanne d’Arc Young
Women’s Hall Sisters of Mercy
Courtesy Norman Gholston.
The image of the demolition of the Marabba West Apartments Former Jean D’Arc Hotel is Courtesy Norman Gholston

Fun Fact #20: Where was the first headshop on NW 23rd?

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Fun Fact #20: Where was the first headshop on NW 23rd?

The first headshop on NW 23rd
was at 1007 NW 23rd Avenue.

Mike Ryerson gave this above image he has shot in the 1970s to US Bank management.
I can’t find the original in his files. The low quality above is a result of snapping a copy of an image behind glass from the wall of the US Bank Lobby on NW 23rd. Credit can go to both as the source.

In the 1970s Portland was a very tolerant city, teeming with hippies, and in 1973 Oregon was the first state in the country to decriminalize marijuana.  I have enjoyed reading Willamette Weeks’s coverage of oldest head shops, although its July 1st 2015 guide to vintage head shops only includes current operations.  The longest continuously operated head shop seems to be Pype’s Place, opened by Patty and Don Collins at 4760 N. Lombard in 1976.  On various occasions Mike Ryerson told me with pride that he had owned the first head shop on NW 23rd.  I never asked him the name of the shop.  There are no images in his photographic collection because it was only after he started volunteering/working at The Neighbor in late 1970s that he became a shutterbug.  

The Polk City Directories and one Oregonian article are my only sources.  In 1971 Mike Ryerson left his respectable job at Montgomery Ward and opened The Index and Shirt Bar at 1007 NW 23rd.  The shop was listed under his name in city directories in 1971, 1972, 1973.  (There is no listing for Mike in 1974 or 1975, but he reappears after his marriage to Shirley Mason on January 3, 1976 and in 1977 lists The Neighbor as his employer.) 

The Sunday Oregonian of June 13, 1971 (page 16) in an article by Fred Mass, “More Young Entrepreneurs…” reports:

“Mike Ryerson 31, married [Lee Dunaway] and father of four children, a lifelong Portland resident, owner of the Index at 1007 NW 23rd Ave., started with $12 and a rented storefront.  He says he has since built the mainstay of his business, stenciled T-shirts, ‘into accounts receivable of over 10 grand and a shop inventory of about $3,000.’  He also sells smoking accessories, costume jewelry, candles, and leather vests.” 

Mike told me that that the shop had no official hours and that it was a hangout for him and his friends.  I am sure that it amused him to no end that our walking tours account is at US Bank—its NW 23rd Avenue branch is the former location of his head shop.

Nob Hill Fun Fact #19: Why is there an elk on the Mackenzie House?

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Black and White exterior image of a stone house with a stage head under an archway. A very unusual example of Queen Shingle Style because the shingles are made of slate. The chimney is massive with decorative metal sun on the basalt rock that starts at the basement level and then contrasts with the shingles..

Nob Hill Fun Fact #19: Why is there an elk on the Mackenzie House?

Photo Credit Tanya Lyn March: “I took this during the rummage sale last Saturday.”
July 2015

 

The bust of a white stag centered below a framing arch of slate shingles is a symbol from the MacKenzie family coat of arms—denoting the doctor’s strong connection to the family’s Scottish roots. I would have loved to have been in the room when the client asked the architects of the 1887 Annex to the Portland Armory (now the Gerding Theater) “to stick an Elk on it”.

A curiously rich and balanced blend of Richardsonian Romanesque and Shingle styles sets this important historic landmark apart from many homes in the neighborhood, through the dark slate shingles used as a dominant material in the exterior cladding. The building is rich with architectural detailing on both exterior and interior, and is constructed of quality materials throughout, including sandstone, slate, ornamental woodwork, and plaster. The use of rusticated Tenino stone is eye-catching. The light hue of the tower and chimney’s sandstone makes a striking contrast to the dark slate shingles. The elegant stones were imported from Tenino, Washington; when these stones were ordered in 1890 the quarry had just started to expand operations that led to a sandstone “boom town” that petered out between 1915 and 1920 as concrete replaced the use of sandstone in construction projects. The only more highly acclaimed house built in this style and material palette was the Julius Loewenberg House, constructed in the same year and demolished in 1960.

Update September 2018: MacKenzie in Gaelic is “Caberfeidh” which translates as “Deer Antlers”.  I have learned that in Scotland there are Red Stages that are similar to our American Elk.  It is possible that that is not an elk at all.

Update April 1, 2020: Go watch some Outlander and get back to me with more information on the clan.  With Covid-19 out and about we are not leading any tours.  It is still a joy to know that William Temple House sold the building but is able to rent it back and is helping feed people at this challenging time.

Slabtown Nob Hill Fun Fact #18: The Great Pretender

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Headline "Facade of Famous Bank to Join Colony" January 27, Eric Ladd is standing in what does not appear to be a safe place to stand in one of the top floor archways of the Ladd and Tilton Bank.

What was Eric Ladd’s Real Name?

Answer: Eric Ladd was born Leslie Carter Hansen on July 29, 1920.

Not only did he acquire amazing homes and meld together various elements.  His friends “borrowed” some iron fencing from Mark Twain’s house in Missouri and put the fencing around his grave. Courtesy Lone Fir

Leslie Carter Hansen attended Ainsworth Elementary School and Lincoln High School.  Eric Ladd was the name he adopted in 1941 when he studied acting presumedly had an acting career in Hollywood until 1943.  He returned to the area to become a shipyard worker in 1943.  He was handsome, debonair, and a connoisseur of elegant old buildings-predating-a formalized system of preservation, he was winging it.

There is a wonderful article in the Northwest Sunday Magazine on March 21, 1971 that details a number of the buildings that Eric attempted to save. Eric Ladd faced rampant demolition of historic structures not unlike the threats historic buildings see today in Portland as we face an increasing demand for multi-unit residential rental houses. Once the demand for parking drove demolitions – currently the demand for housing is driving the wave of demolitions.

The early days of the “Ladd Colony” Kamm on the left Lincoln House replica constructed for the 1905 Lewis & Clark Fair. (Image copyright is owned by the University of Oregon) Eric Ladd NW Magazine 1971

In the 1960s Ladd collected a number of historic buildings the way some elite collect antique cars.  The collection of homes, fondly called “the colony” stood on a two acre tract of land at SW 21st and Jefferson. He operated a restaurant out of the Kamm House from 1955 to 1959. The structures were moved there and all but one had been condemned by the City of Portland.  His home will be open to the public for twenty-five dollars on June 21st, 2015.

Eric was openly gay this OHS image is from a high society event.

Eric Ladd was one of the leaders in saving cast iron components of buildings being demolished during the 1960s Urban Renewal Era. He was also instrumental in saving the Pittock Mansion. 

Eric Ladd received the Northwest Examiner historic preservation award in 1994 and the Bosco-Milligan Foundation award in 1999.